A question for Acronis user

I am thinking of buying Acronis to make clones for my two laptops. I only have one external drive. Is it possible to use Acronis to make two different clones (one from each laptop) on the same external drive? Thanks.

 

Yeah, no problem , Arcronis makes your backup into a single compressed file , you can even rename it as long as you keep the extension, put the file on anything you want.

Now whether the Acronis license allows you to install on more that one system is another thing.

 

Thanks, but just to make sure I was clear enough -- I am talking about a clone of the hard drive to be used to replace the original hard drive with.

 

I have used Acronis to copy all the partitions on my hdd, four partitions in total the entire hdd and it compressed them all into a single file.

One thing i dont know is if it will create the partitions on a new/blank hdd as i have not tried this, I just restore the data to existing partitions.

 

Yes, Acronis can do what you want to do. I can create a clone to a file from any HDD connected to my computer or directly to another HDD connected to my computer.

 

I am still not sure I asked the right question. Let me try again. I have only one external drive. I used a really old version of Acronis to make a clone for one laptop. I removed the laptop's hard drive and replaced it with this external drive. It works beautifully.

I have tried to put two clones from two laptops on this external drive but my old version of Acronis always wiped out the old stuff before putting the new stuff on.

I want to use just one external drive for two laptops. If one of the laptops' hard drive is infected with a virus, or has a physical failure, I can just replace it with the external drive. I hoping that current version of Acronis will let me put two clones from two different laptops on the same external drive. Thanks again for your help.

 

Surely you just need to format the external drive into 2 partitions. 1 partition for each clone?

 

A clone of the laptop drive would turn the HD in the external enclosure into an exact copy of the original drive, hence the term clone. The external drive could not possibly be a clone (or contain two clones, no such thing on a single HD) of two drives at the same time that would be contradictory. So in summary, one external HD, one Clone.

The other method, mentioned in this thread, is creating an image of the original drive in your laptop and saving that image to an external drive. You CAN save multiple images (using different names) from several different PC’s onto one external drive, up to the capacity of the drive, and use those images to restore to an existing drive in a PC or to a new virgin HD (the new HD may have to be formated first, I always do a quick format anyway to test the drive).

I have restored images many times and all partitions will be created just as in the original image. Although NOT the same as a clone by definition it can accomplish the same thing. I make images every two weeks for all my computers on an external then copy the created images to a secondary external, poor mans NAS.

Also, yes you can install Acronis TI on multiple computers using the same SN although I don’t now if it is legal as I can’t remember what agreement I accepted when I installed my purchased retail copy (I have it installed on three of my systems). Actualy you don’t have to install the software on ANY computer after you create the “Bootable Rescue Media” or download the Linux based rescue media from Acronis site after you register your retail purchase. You can boot your computer from the Rescue Media and perform all the tasks just as you would from within windows.